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Una Mullally

Society, life and culture on the edge

Taylor Swift’s above average Q score

I thought this article in the New York Times about Taylor Swift’s new campaign for Keds was interesting, because you rarely read people in articles identifying specific Q scores of celebrities. The Q Score was a metric developed in the …

Una Mullally

Una

Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 15:35

I thought this article in the New York Times about Taylor Swift’s new campaign for Keds was interesting, because you rarely read people in articles identifying specific Q scores of celebrities. The Q Score was a metric developed in the 1960s that measures the likability of brands and personalities, so Swift would be in the Performer Q category.

The general criteria for Performer Q scores is stuff like familiarity, emotional connection, recognition, negative and positive feelings, appeal, likability. The average (live – there is another scale for deceased slebs called Dead Q) celebrity’s Q score is 17, which drops a point for the average female singer. But Swift’s Q score is a 24, reaching 26 amongst young women aged 13 to 24, so you can see why Keds wanted her.

(pic via the New York Times)

This is why Keds thinks she works, I put the especially marketingspeakfest bits in bold.

“We started doing a lot of consumer insight work,” said Rick Blackshaw, president for Keds in Lexington, Mass., and found that “heroes are important” to the brand’s target audience.

“We thought about who would be Brave Girl No. 1,” he said, and came up with Ms. Swift, who “at 14 convinced her family to move to Nashville so she could pursue her musical career.”

As for the Taylor Swifties, “it’s nothing we’re going to comment on,” Mr. Blackshaw said. “We think she is a fantastic role model, an incredible talent and really meaningful to our girl.”

That was echoed by Bob Fouhy, president at Toth in Cambridge, Mass., who praised Ms. Swift because “she so strongly embodies what the Keds brand is about: being eternally optimistic and confident.”

Keds describing their target market as “our girl” kind of creeps me out for some reason.